The New York Daily News really busted its chops to bring readers the evidence of an extraterrestrial presence/CREDIT: nydailynews.com

On Tuesday, Day 2 of the mock congressional hearings, Woolsey’s CHoD colleague, former Maryland Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, was already torqued by the media’s handling of this thing. As apparently tireless Huffington Post blogger Lee Spiegel reported, Bartlett read a piece that chided him and five other former elected officials for getting $20K to hear the witnesses testify.

“That’s just insulting, that we can be bought for $20,000 — that’s ridiculous!” Bartlett bristled over the article. “It goes on to say that …’former member Roscoe Bartlett, in an opening statement, Bartlett said he hadn’t fulfilled his duty in office by failing to hold hearings on extraterrestrials…’ I NEVER SAID THAT! … I never said that I believed in extraterrestrials. I believe that there are sightings out there that cannot be easily explained away.”

Umm, dude — unexplained sightings are not the premise of organizer Steve Bassett’s gathering. Let’s read his website’s wording again: “The Citizen Hearing on Disclosure of an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race will attempt to accomplish what the Congress has failed to do for forty-five years – seek out the facts surrounding the most important issue of this or any other time.”

It isn’t easy being green — oy vey!/CREDIT: trutv.com

This is what happens when you lead with your jugular vein. This from The Guardian (a subhed): “Only little green men at National Press Club are dead presidents on $20,000 honorariums paid to committee members.” From the Toronto Star: “True believers in aliens at this week’s Citizen Hearing on Disclosure …” (That word again — believers. Sheesh.) In an article headlined “Space Cadets Hit D.C.,” The New York Daily News ran pix of two attendees wearing third-eye headbands. De Void has also decided to run a photo from a U.S. News & World Report blog (below right — can you find it?):

The retired pols had to know they were gonna get hammered, no matter what happened, and a site called Parapolitical described them all as “cash-strapped has-beens.” It revived a memo by former Utah Rep. Merrill Cook’s chief of staff stating “Merrill has taken up permanent residence in whacko land” — while Cook was still in office. It posted a video of Bartlett “groveling in front of (Rev. Sun Myung) Moon.” There were ex-Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel’s money woes, for which he “has pathetically taken to making public appearances for anyone who will buy him lunch.” And of course, inevitably, there was the jab at Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, whose son Kwame Kilpatrick was bounced out of the Detroit Mayor’s office for multiple corruption convictions.

Cheeks Kilpatrick failed to disappoint on Monday by introducing celebrity audience member/Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who by his own account was beamed aboard a UFO mother ship in 1985 and given instructions by sect founder Elijah Muhammed. Someday, Farrakhan revealed back then, the UFOs will “rain destruction upon white America but will save those who embrace the Nation of Islam.”

Final Call, the Nation of Islam’s paper, was on hand for the Citizen Hearing and felt compelled to quote yet another celebrity onlooker in its coverage — ancient comic Dick Gregory. With so little mainstream media focus on the actual content of the National Press Club testimony, De Void will join the crowd and hand the mike over to the aging civil rights activist for his stated assessment of the UFO coverup:

“You see White supremacy at its best. Here is why they have to lie: The world is 97 percent non-White, that means 3 percent White. Now how does 3 percent control the whole planet? White supremacy. So once they admit these things exist, White supremacy goes out the window, organized religion goes out the window.”